Father Lawrence settles into an armchair by the fireplace in a sitting room just inside the main entrance of the monastery, the flames dancing happily there like this isn’t the middle of the night. He welcomed us in, shut the door behind us, and led us away as another monk took his place by the door.

Security settles over me like the light from the fireplace, warm and comfortable. We’re not in the church, but it’s sanctuary nonetheless.

Father Lawrence considers me, and I look back. “You still keep watch all night?”

He smiles, the lines in his face deepening. “If we hadn’t kept that ancient tradition, no one would have been awake to greet you.”

“I’m glad you were.” I remember myself with a little shock. Jesus, I’m being a dick. “Father Lawrence, this is—” My girlfriend? Who was my prisoner? And who’s now my fiancée?

She bails me out. Of course she does. “Sia Ricci,” Sia says, standing to shake his hand.

“Welcome.” Father Lawrence greets her with the same warmth as always, and pure impatience shudders through me. I’m asking him for a favor, I know that. I’m asking him to do something unconventional—I know that too. But I want to be done with the asking. I want to be done with the talking. I want to be married to Sia. He must see it in my eyes, because he folds his hands in his lap and speaks. “What brings you here tonight, Gio?”

I tell him everything.

God help me, I tell him everything—everything but the personal details—my eyes glued to his face. He is calm, though at certain points in my story the corners of my mouth turn down. Finally, my mouth dry, I reach the end.

“—so we left and came straight here. To ask you for your help.” I can’t help the note of command, of confidence, seeping into my voice, and I shove it back. This isn’t the time for Moretto confidence. This is a time to be humble. “Please.”

He looks at each of us in turn, Sia in her chair, me in mine.

Then he starts in with the questions.

It’s not only now that’s relevant to Father Lawrence, it’s everything. Somehow, the things he says draw out words I thought were locked in my head forever. I find myself, at one point, trying to describe the way the afternoon sunlight danced in her hair. The air in the room thickens with meaning. One question after another, and he does the same for Sia. She answers everything in that clear, even voice of hers. She never looks to me for approval. She’s telling the simplest truth.

I don’t know how long it’s been when Father Lawrence takes in a deep breath, and my chest expands with the weight of it. This—this—is what it’s going to come down to. I can sense it.

“Are you certain of this?” I’m ready to say yes, more certain than I have ever been, but he presses on. “Even though you have much to learn about each other?”

I bite back the hasty word, the hasty answer, the answer to get what I want right fucking now. I breathe in the significance of this moment. I breathe it back out. I turn his words over in my mind. I hold them there, looking from every angle.

“Yes,” answers Sia, and her voice rings with finality.

Father Lawrence nods, but he doesn’t smile. His face is serious. “Then come with me.”

There are things we have to take care of, before he’ll marry us. A special form that comes only from the monastery that stands in for a marriage license. Father Lawrence patiently explains that we’ll need to take it to the courthouse and file it. “Afterward,” he says, but he doesn’t go into any detail about what after means. He doesn’t have to.

Then, with two other monks as witnesses, he leads us through the monastery and into the church.

It’s softly lit with candles, but there’s something else—the gray light of dawn.

We’ve driven and talked and waited all night.

Father Lawrence takes his place at the altar and begins the ceremony, head bowed, and when he raises is, Sia puts her arm through mine.

We walk up the aisle together.

It’s a breathtaking intimacy, standing up here with her. There’s nobody else to interfere, to offer an opinion—we’re past that now. And the ritual words that Father Lawrence is saying are the only guide I need. Words about marriage and fidelity. About man and wife. I hear all of it as if I’m underwater. The only thing that matters is Sia, standing here with her hands in mine.

She looks beautiful.

Father Lawrence let her slip away for a few minutes while he filled out the paperwork, and when she reappeared she was wearing a dark blue dress with modest cap sleeves, so heartbreakingly appropriate that it makes me want to rip it off her.

It’s her wedding dress.

Father Lawrence takes a breath, readying himself to move on to our vows—it’s not a long ceremony—and that’s when it happens.

The sun breaks through the window behind me, and the light slips down over my head. Sia is ablaze with it, golden with it, her blue eyes shining, her hair a fiery blonde, her dress like dark water over her curves. She is radiant. Absolutely radiant.

She is an angel.

My chest tightens and swells at the same time, my heart squeezing at the sight of her, burning into my memory. I’m in the presence of something so precious and holy that the church could fall down around us and she’d walk away without a scratch—God himself would never allow it. The thought comes wildly to my mind and falls away.

Shit.

I need to breathe. I can’t suffocate myself at my own wedding.

Sia squeezes my hands, smiling up at me, and brings me back down to earth.

There are no bells ringing in the bell tower; there is no crowd of well-wishers in the pews. But it doesn’t matter. This is my wedding day. This is my wife.